True marriage is for life

San Bernardino, Calif., Feb 1, 2012 / 03:39 am (CNA).- The faith-based marriage enrichment program Worldwide Marriage Encounter has announced the 2012 state winners of its Longest Married Couple contest: a Nevada couple who married in 1933.

“The number of years many of these couples are married is just awesome,” Scott and Karen Seaborn, the U.S. leadership team for Worldwide Marriage Encounter, said of the contest entrants.

“There are four couples married 78 years, many couples married 70 plus years and quite a few couples with 60 plus years of marriage. What a testament to having a commitment to a long marriage!”

The project received 256 nominations from 47 states.

The longest-married couple to be nominated is Wilbur and Theresa Faiss of Las Vegas, Nevada, who have been married for 78 years. They were married on April 14, 1933.

The Faiss couple will be honored by the Seaborns in a special Feb. 11 ceremony in their hometown.

Couples involved in Worldwide Marriage Encounter will recognize and honor individual state winners across the U.S. over the week of Valentine’s Day.

Last year, the longest-married couple contest honored Marshall and Winnie Kuykendall of Lordsburg, New Mexico, who were married for 82 years after their 1929 wedding. Three other couples who had been married 80 years won their state contests.

Winners of last year’s contest became members of the contest’s alumni group. Couples cannot succeed themselves each year as national or state winners so that other long-married couples can be honored.

Worldwide Marriage Encounter, based in San Bernardino, Calif., has a presence in more than 90 countries and is the world’s largest pro-marriage movement.

11 Responses to True marriage is for life

I guess longest co-habitation doesn’t count. I was thinking Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Goldie who calls herself a Jewish-Buddhist heads a foundation that teaches ‘Buddhist meditation techniques’ in PUBLIC schools. Kurt, no Hollywood liberal, (and reputed to be a nice guy) is a ‘libertarian’ and I think it should give a Catholic pause to how broadly this term may be interpreted when it comes to natural law.

Every year on the Sunday nearest St. Valentine’s Day, our parish honors couples who have been married for 50 years or more with a special blessing at the end of Mass and a reception in the parish hall. We have another group in the parish for the newly-married (3 years or less), and the newly-married couples cook and serve at the reception for the long-married couples. It is a wonderful opportunity to be reminded of the goal, and that it is possible to weather the hard times and be happy together for decades.

Not to rain on anyone’s parade here….and I do congratulate the long-wedded couples….honest, I do….but I’ve sat through enough World Marriage Day Masses, sitting alone in the pew as a single woman (which I still am), and feeling very depressed.
Single Catholics (especially those past a certain age) are pretty much ignored. Everything is geared to married couples and kids (the ‘group’ or ‘herd’ mentality). If one is a single person in a parish, they are often thought of as a ‘threat’.
Thank God I attend the TLM exclusively-that way I don’t have to endure the attention paid to married people at the expense of those of us who never got married and have to spend the rest of our lives alone.

I recall that Marriage Encounter was quite a big deal in the Parish where I grew up. It tended to attract the same people who were also involved in charismatic and similar groups. Of the 3 or 4 couples who were most active in promoting the Marriage Encounter weekends, all but 1 subsequently divorced. One friend of mine blamed Marriage Encounter for the breakup of his parents’ marriage and his father’s apostasy.

The irony of your remarks is almost sidesplitting, insofar as you are thankful that you attend the TLM so that you haven’t got to worry about enduring a family-oriented environment! LOL!

Uh…at any rate…don’t feel too disenfranchised. When you go to Mass you get to focus on the liturgy. When couples with children go to Mass they get to focus on:

1. Finding an entire free pew (having arrived five minutes late).
2. Repeating admonitions over and over again to their children to turn around and pay attention.
3. Reaching under their pews to pick up stray toys/books/bottles/teethers/shoes/children.
4. Wiping runny noses.
5. Escorting children to the rest room.
6. Escorting children to the “cry” room.
7. Spanking badly behaved children and then having to escort them to the “cry” room.
8. Apologizing to the worshippers sitting in front of them and enduring their annoyed facial expressions.
9. Running down the aisle to retrieve escapees.
10. “Mommy, I wanted to put the money in the basket!!!” (back to the “cry” room)
11. Returning to ushers money that was taken from the basket.
12. “No!”
13. “Mommy, how come I don’t get to get one ???” (then from the Communion line back to the “cry”room)
14. “Go in peace? Is he joking?”

Are they really in a more enviable position than you and me in the context of a liturgical environment? I don’t happen to think so. And even if sermons might seem from time to time to be more geared in their direction than yours or mine…are they able to pay much attention to them? Do they really see you as a threat or are they perhaps just jealous of you? Grass is always greener…

Centristan-
I (a single middle aged man) will try to charitably remember all this next Sunday.

A toddler began to cry during Fulton Sheen’s homily and he said “Please, don’t take him out he’s not bothering me.” And the mother replied, “Maybe not, Father, but you’re bothering him.” He loved to tell that story.

This discussion brings back lots a memories as we raised 7 kids and rarely missed Mass. To the “single” I can honestly say, be careful what you wish for. My years as a husband and parent have been wonderful. 46 of marriage this April 23. Even with all the heart-ache and troubles it been great and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Sword40-
“It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful businessman or farmer, or a successful lawyer, or doctor, or a writer, or a president, or a ranchman … or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”
-Teddy Roosevelt

Centristian:
‘Sidesplitting irony?’ Me? Really? Seriously?
What I was referring to was the yearly excruciating (to me, at least) imposition of ‘World Marriage Day’ at the NO Mass. At the TLM chapel I attend, this is not even mentioned, much less ‘observed’.
And yes, there are families with children who attend our Mass; but I sit in the front pew and try to keep my attention focussed on the Mass. I don’t turn around….
There’s one family who has the largest number of children (six now, the youngest having just been born in early December of last year). When the little guys get antsy (or in the case of the new baby) or start crying, the parents do the right thing and take them out in the vestibule (the chapel is too small to have a crying room). There’s also another family who had a new baby a few weeks prior as well; whenever the little guy starts to cry, I always hear the mother carry him out to the same place (the vestibule) so that the rest of us can hear Mass in [relative] peace, and that the priest doesn’t have any ‘competition’!
I get along fine with the families who have their kids come to Mass. I even say ‘hi’ to both the parents AND the kids afterwards. I try to be friendly with everyone who comes to Mass at the chapel.
I’m certainly not ‘jealous’-I just get depressed because everything seems geared towards couples and families. ‘One is the loneliest number’, as the song goes….single people are the ‘great invisible demographic’ as far as the Church is concerned, unless one is an ‘organizational whiz’ and ‘super-talented’ (neither qualities of which I possess). It’s only then that a single person has any attention paid to them. If one is the ‘quiet type’ (as I am), then you’re ‘invisible’, you’re ‘nothing’.
[I’m not saying this in anger-I want to be friendly with everyone who comments here. But I had to ‘speak my piece’]

Centristian,
LOL. I didn’t know you were married with children :P Or, are you the male alter ego of the Mother of 5 now adult children who sits behind my family at Mass and encourages us afterwards?

Starting to think about BACK TO SCHOOL items? Even text books? When you shop…

... through Amazon, please, come here first? Enter Amazon through my search box. I'll then get a small percentage of everything you buy. (Pssst - Can't see the search box? Turn off your "ad-blocker" for this site!)

Search Fr. Z’s Blog

Search for:

"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ... If all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians." CDF 2003 and HERE

Support them with prayer and fasting.

CLICK and say your Daily Offering!

Leave Voice Mail for Fr. Z

Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.

WDTPRS

020 8133 4535

651-447-6265

Let us pray…

Grant unto thy Church, we beseech
Thee, O merciful God, that She, being
gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may
be in no wise troubled by attack from her
foes.
O God, who by sin art offended and by
penance pacified, mercifully regard the
prayers of Thy people making supplication
unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of
Thine anger which we deserve for our sins.
Almighty and Everlasting God, in
whose Hand are the power and the
government of every realm: look down upon
and help the Christian people that the heathen
nations who trust in the fierceness of their
own might may be crushed by the power of
thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world
without end. R. Amen.

Yes, Fr. Z is taking ads…

... and there will be nearly 1,000,000 page loads this month.

Traditional Catholic? Are you single? Don’t want to be? CLICK!

Help Monks in Wyoming, Fr. Z, and get great coffee too!

And they have tea too!

Because you don’t know when you are going to need to move fast or get along without the supermarket…

Great gift for newly ordained priests. Folding altar card set for the Traditional Latin Mass.

And check out the stunning FULL SIZE altar cards HERE. I have a set on my altar.

New Gregorian Chant CD by the Benedictines of Norcia!

Wyoming Catholic College!

A great place in Rome…

Identity theft is a serious problem that you do NOT want to have. I use Lifelock.

And for your cybersecurity…

My wish lists

Main Wishlist Kindle WishlistAudio WishlistHam Radio ListNEW

Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

- St. John Paul II

A bit more food for thought…

“Only one sin is nowadays severely punished: the attentive observance of the traditions of our Fathers. For that reason the good ones are thrown out of their places and brought to the desert.”

For your consideration…

"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

- C.S. Lewis

More food for thought:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Check out the Cardinal Newman Society feed!

Be a “Zed-Head”!

Fr. Z’s stuff is everywhere

More food for thought…

"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void."

- Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 176

Even More Food For Thought

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests."

To set up a recurring, monthly donation (even a small one) go to the bottom of this blog and look for the drop down menu! Some donations also come through Chase/Manhattan (if you don't like PayPal).

I remember benefactors in my prayers and periodically say Mass for your intention.

Additional Food For Thought

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Fathers, you don’t know who might show up! It could be a “big fish” of one sort or other…

What people say…

"Father John Zuhlsdorf is a crank"
"Father Zuhlsdorf drives me crazy"
"the hate-filled Father John Zuhlsford" [sic]
"Father John Zuhlsdorf, the right wing priest who has a penchant for referring to NCR as the 'fishwrap'"

Help the Sisters. They have a building project. Get great soap (gifts, etc.) while helping REAL nuns!

Food For Thought

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Archives

ENTRY CALENDAR

Do you use my blog often? Is it helpful to you?

If so, please consider subscribing to send a monthly donation. That way I have steady income I can plan on, and you wind up regularly on my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I periodically say Holy Mass.